Category: Notes from Stonehaven
-
One Word: Ourself
My recent article on the “singular they” prompted an insightful question from reader Mahin Pouryaghma. Just to provide context: Dr. Pouryaghma is a licensed professional counselor whose practice emphasizes self-honesty. You can read her background here on the Psychology Today website. She writes: “When I am talking to more than one person and am saying…
-
One Word: Strengths
“Strengths” first caught my attention for being the longest English word with only one vowel. Longest, that is, in number of letters. There are other ways of measuring lengths. Nowadays, if we ask such a question on any Internet forum like Quora, while forgetting to specify letter-count, there’s no shortage of people to remind us…
-
One Word: Brevity
“Brevity” is one of those words that exemplifies itself. Seven letters long, it’s the noun form of “brief”, which means short. “Brief” and “short” also are words constituting examples of themselves. Words that rhyme with brevity include “levity” and “longevity”. (This article is part of my series on words that are #worth1000pictures.)
-
One Word: Solitude
Some words I love because of the way they sound. The way they feel when I write them. Their playful ambiguities. Their spelling quirks. Others I love mostly on account of what they mean to me. “Solitude” is a word I love for many reasons – but mostly for its meaning. I love to be…
-
One Word: The Singular They
Glad tidings! English now has a third-person pronoun that is both singular and gender-neutral. Best of all, it’s grammatically correct, according to all the best authorities we need to heed. It’s a pronoun we’ve always had – and used. For centuries it was universally accepted. For a while it fell out of favor in formal…
-
Phyllis Ring’s The Munich Girl
Cheri and I are thrilled to be reading the newly released novel from our friend Phyllis Edgerly Ring. It’s called The Munich Girl: A Novel of the Legacies That Outlast War. Not yet too far along, but already loving it. (I’ll post an update here when I’m finished.) Normally I don’t mention new books –…
-
Fabiola Gianotti’s Baffling Anagrams
CERN, the world’s top particle physics facility, has a new director-general, the fabulous Fabiola Gianotti. She took the reins this month, having been democratically chosen by colleagues. The soft-spoken, hard-driving, serenely brilliant Italian scientist will need every atom of her legendary stamina for the coming ordeal. That’s not only because she’s the first woman to…
-
Two Words: Compound
This series is about single words that are each, individually, worth a thousand pictures. Seems a simple enough premise. Except when it isn’t. What about “words” that consist of two or more words? Increasingly I’m feeling the need to write about expressions such as “lame duck”, “ice cream”, or “son of a gun”. No, wait…
-
One Word: Crumb
Some words fascinate me on account of unusual or specialized ways they can be used. “Crumb” is such a word. Singular, not plural. I’m not especially interested in crumbs (plural), the little shards of bread, cake, pie crust, and the like that break off and make a mess that needs to be cleaned up so…
-
One Word: Epistemology
Here’s a word I almost never use: “epistemology”. And yet – I love it. That odd-sounding word represents one of the defining themes of my life. A theme that runs through all my books and writings. A theme that engages my thoughts, rivets my attention. That theme is a question: How do we know what…
-
What’s More Practical Than Being Happy?
Nothing! This principle — the practicality of happiness — was first impressed upon me some years ago during a meeting of the Knoxville Baha’i assembly. We had decided to send a gift as a token of appreciation to a wonderful lady who had provided heroic service to the community. An assembly member named Betty suggested…
-
All the Candidates’ Anagrams
It’s that joyful season when anagram freaks (like me) dig deep to see what things we can spell by reshuffling letters in the names of leading candidates for President of the US of A. Break out your Scrabble blocks, and let’s begin. First, a note: When anagramming public figures, I shoot for humor – ideally…